Note: If you are the TL;DR type, let me cut to the chase. Surface and Surface 2 both include Office, the world’s most popular, most powerful productivity software for free and are priced below both the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively.

Making Apple’s decision to build the price of their less popular and less powerful iWork into their tablets not a very big (or very good) deal.

....Microsoft understands how people work better than anyone else on the planet...We literally wrote the book on getting things done.

And so it’s not surprising that we see other folks now talking about how much “work” you can get done on their devices. Adding watered down productivity apps. Bolting on aftermarket input devices. All in an effort to convince people that their entertainment devices are really work machines.

In that spirit, Apple announced yesterday that they were dropping their fees on their “iWork” suite of apps. Now, since iWork has never gotten much traction, and was already priced like an afterthought, it’s hardly that surprising or significant a move. And it doesn’t change the fact that it’s much harder to get work done on a device that lacks precision input and a desktop for true side-by-side multitasking.
...So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don’t see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up.

Of course his comment overlooks the fact that most Windows 8.1 tablets don't include Office. And it also is somewhat ironic that he espouses standardization in Office as a selling point, when Microsoft was long accused of fighting or otherwise trying to subvert standards to make Office documents compatible with open source alternatives (although it's recently come around somewhat).

II. ... But he has some points

However, Office as freebie -- particularly with the $449 USD Surface 2 -- is a pretty good deal.

Surface 2 (L) and Surface Pro 2 (R)

And Mr. Shaw is correct that Apple's iWork feature-wise is more comparable to the already free Google Docs (by Google Inc. (GOOG)) than Office; in fact Google Docs is arguably more powerful in that it's cross platform compatible (like Office). Both Google Docs and iWork will meet the needs of most casual users. But for many enterprise and power users, moving from Office to these free lighter alternatives is not an option and Microsoft knows that.

Richard Stallman: “Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process.”

The problem with quoting Richard Stallman is that anyone who might consider him to be providing an unbiased opinion already agrees that Microsoft is the embodiment of evil.

Stallman is brilliant and talented. He's also extremely opinionated.

If you think that standards, or at least large parts of standards being submitted by a single company is something new, then you really haven't had much experience working with standards organizations.

Microsoft and those that work with them and create compatible products represent a huge percentage of the business software market. Why is it surprising that they are able to push their implementation through the standards process without having a lot of changes forced on them? Standardization still provides benefits to consumers and other companies, but complaining that the majority of the standards group sided with Microsoft just makes some other people bad losers.

Microsoft in the past was able to push their products as a defacto standard. People complained about needing to have more open standards, but apparently didn't realize that most companies and even individuals have a vested interest in Microsoft Office as a Standard, and it shouldn't be that surprising that Microsoft was able to get enough support to push though a standard.

The problem when discussing Microsoft Office is people look at it from just Writing a document, sending an e-mail, and doing a simple Excel spreadsheet when Office is a portion of a much larger Eco system.

Where Microsoft Office destroys any competition from remotely coming close is when you add in Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Project Server then its like bringing a water balloon to fight the entire US Military. Nothing come remotely close to Office in the corporate world.

Say what you want about MS and their products. MS has PLENTY of flaws. However, It cannot be denied that they have the most fully integrated ecosystem out there when it comes to what a corporate environment needs. From excel to sql server to sharepoint, etc. This stuff really, really plays well together.

Also, I want to see anyone do some REALLY complex stuff in spreadsheets other than Excel. Not just making a list or creating a budget, etc. But something truly complex (think tens of thousands of advanced financial calculations). That's the sort of stuff I do at work, so I NEED excel. Now, for home stuff... I use google docs because it's sufficient for my home needs.

quote: The problem with quoting Richard Stallman is that anyone who might consider him to be providing an unbiased opinion already agrees that Microsoft is the embodiment of evil.

Logical fallacy - Poisoning the well.

He is biased but his ill will against MS isn't unjustified by any means. You haven't offered any real proof otherwise.

But I will!

1. Those so called XML office formats are just xml wrappers around the same old binary formats.2. Documentation is incomplete to flat out wrong on the format itself.3. Ignoring all the problems with the format, MS lobbied and shoved the approval of the format on fast track, which it never should have for such a format.

No, the XML files are not binary files, they are zip files containing full XML. The ridiculously obvious example is the fact that you can save an Excel spreadsheet as xlsm (XML based) or xlsb (binary based) with the binary version significantly smaller and faster to open.

I'm well aware of how XML files are saved, and that has nothing to do with the simple fact that their XML formats are XML wrapped for the sake of marketing and not for any usable technical advantage whatsoever.